Volume 9, January 2021
Feliz Año Nuevo, buckaroos and buckarettes!
I'm Bob - welcome to the New Year! You may know me from the band Big Medicine Head or daytime television. This monthly missive from the land of tumbleweeds and the lonesome six string guitar features news from the frontier, music and prose. Each issue will have a downloadable track and lyrics, along with the backstory of the song. For the duration of the pandemic we'll also feature live songs from the bunker. Call me crazy, but I'm giving all this away for free.
If you'd like to revisit past issues of Tales of the Western Hemisphere you can find them at bobgemmell.com.
S O N G o f t h e M O N T H
Sit back and relax as we explore the Bob Gemmell and Big Medicine Head song catalog. The download instructions are at the bottom of this message.
The Patron Saint of Desperate Causes
I had this dream the other night that 2020 was my next door neighbor, and came over to my house one day to borrow a cup of sugar and some power tools. I opened the door to welcome 2020 into my house, and before I knew it my guest had raided the refrigerator and was sunk into my couch, binge watching all 53 seasons of Law and Order.
The Patron Saint of Desperate Causes is a song I wrote in contemplation of times like these. In this winter of weirdness and disaffection is there someone who will reach down the well, grab our hand, and pull us out of this wretched sink-hole?
The song came to me after I had watched The Milagro Beanfield War. I was particularly moved by the scene in which Amarante has had an accident and is clinging to life, and Herbie makes a fumbling attempt at garnering spiritual assistance for him by offering tacos and beer at a makeshift shrine to a saint who helps out with this sort of thing.
This song appears on our Queen of the Western Hemisphere album. When you listen you're going to hear JeffyD, the Sonic Lord at the top of his mixing game (for the uninitiated, JeffyD is my audio brother and partner in the production crime-spree known as Sterno Bums International). I've never witnessed anyone conjure musical juju from a mixing board the way JeffyD can. On this track we were holed up in Lucky Dog Studio in Eugene, Oregon - slamming caffeine and channeling the open highways of the American southwest. We got a little riff-happy.
And...the King of All Guitarists, JD Devros tears this track up. Listen to the way my acoustic guitar solo hands off to his searing burn-down-the-mission electric guitar interlude.
Listen here, or follow the download instructions below.
I hope you dig it.
The Patron Saint of Desperate Causes
There is a river running
right outside my bedroom window
I hear the water ripple
louder when the southern wind blows
there is a river running
right outside my bedroom window
I heard a voice
I saw a sign
I saw the light
I saw The Patron Saint of Desperate Causes
there is a Patron Saint of Desperate Causes
there is a fire burning bright
I saw a slogan carved
into a wall inside a subway
I saw a soldier kicking peasants
in a another country
I saw a corporation
And I saw a tribe in their way
I heard a voice
I saw a sign
I saw the light
I saw the Patron Saint of Desperate Causes
there is a Patron Saint of Desperate Causes
there is a fire burning bright
there is a guiding hand
that leads us through our desperation
there is a jungle full of thieves
who think that they’re a nation
there is a guiding hand
that leads us through our desperation
there is a light
there is a voice
there is a sign
There is a Patron Saint of Desperate Causes
The Patron Saint of Desperate Causes
there is a fire burning bright
I saw an Arab
dancing wild in his minaret
I saw a desert scarred
with tire tracks and cigarettes
I saw an Arab
reach for heaven from his minaret
he tried to touch the face of God
There is a Patron Saint of Desperate Causes
The Patron Saint of Desperate Causes
there is a fire burning bright
B U L L E T I N
America, After the War was just released - it's blowing up the internet - the highest views and likes we've ever received on YouTube and Instagram - check it out here.
S O N G f r o m t h e B U N K E R
Each month we spin up a new song from the foxhole we find ourselves in.
The Saint of Everything
We're going to keep the saint theme going, everyone.
We've all been waiting so long for 2020 to end. We held our breath and counted down together on New Years Eve, in anticipation of deliverance from the crappiest year ever. Then January 6th happened, and it wasn't January 6th at all. It was December 37th, 2020. I don't have words to describe how awful I felt as I watched the Capitol that day. I’m still stunned by it.
We grow up with a sense of containment; we live in a house inside a state inside a nation, and the center of the nation is that building. There is comfort in knowing that while among ourselves we play tug of war with ideology, and different shoes walk those marble floors from generation to generation, the Capitol is a constant - our secular temple. I’ve been in that building several times, and I whisper when I’m there, in reverence. Watching undereducated misanthropes desecrate it rattled me at the core.
We’re all going to need a shower to wash off this Presidency. Afterward we’ll be left wondering: are we who we think we are?
The Saint of Everything is an expression of yearning - a prayer, perhaps. I hope it finds you safe and happy, and not too beaten up by whatever it is we're going through.
Just click here to listen, or anywhere on the photo of me and Rex.
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Me and Rex |
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